


The Fading

by kalypsobean



Series: B2MeM 2014 stories [4]
Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-16
Updated: 2014-03-16
Packaged: 2018-01-15 22:08:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1320922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalypsobean/pseuds/kalypsobean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Elladan and the fading of Imladris, and what comes after.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Fading

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [Back to Middle Earth Month](http://b2mem.livejournal.com) 2014 for prompt [Autumn Forest](http://www.publicdomainpictures.net/view-image.php?image=26775&picture=autumn-forest) (picture prompt).

Things changed when Ada left; without Vilya, it seemed as if a light had gone out, leaving everything and everyone a dimmer version of their old selves. We didn't even notice at first, but when Grandfather arrived, he pointed it out; then it was all we saw.

Part of it was that we missed all who had sailed; our songs were mournful and we no longer stood on ceremony, for there were not enough of us to fill the long tables of Ada's halls. But the leaves, having been captured in between green and brown for so long, began to fall, until we crunched them beneath our boots as we walked and the trees began to look bare and brittle, no longer able to provide us with shelter. We did not notice the harvests growing smaller, as we had enough for ourselves and fewer opportunities to trade, now that Gondor could succour those villages still rebuilding; there was no extra to store. We rode out less and less, though the paths were clear of Orcs; they grew over and hid us from the world outside, though the Eagles still brought us news, until they too abandoned these shores.

"We should leave," my brother said, though neither of us felt the call from the West, that sea-longing that crept like weariness upon our peers, even Grandfather, who was born here and had not set foot on the vast shore from which only Elves could sail.

I still felt the earth, though its voice was now but a whisper in my mind rather than a comfort and a source of strength. It still nurtured me, and though I rode with my kin, I felt its sadness at our leaving and wondered how I could abandon it entirely into the hands of Men.

 

As the sun set, though, and the forest began to thin around us, I saw Anor's falling below the horizon, anointing the crests of shallow waves, and I thought I heard Ada calling to me. I saw Grandfather's face lose its lines as he found peace, being so close to the shore and the boat that awaited us there, with Círdan and the last of our kind. I felt nothing of a kind with that, no peace or certainty, no weight lifting from my shoulders or a rightness in riding away from all the lands I had learned to call home. 

We did not need to wait; there would be no last great feast or a farewell song, and indeed, the only activity was on the boat, a large, many-layered barge built for my family and the last to sail. Grandfather boarded, and was lost among the many who greeted him, but I could not dismount from my horse, or force him any closer. There was a searing within me at the sight of such hope, as if it were something I could never have; I was an outsider here.

My brother turned back for me, but I did not wait for a goodbye; for us, there would be no tearful parting, no final warrior's grasp or moment in which we breathed the same air. I let the forest take me in its final autumn and rode until I no longer heard the gulls and I forgot about the guilt their cry inspired; the West did not call me, and naught would change that save the petitions of my family to the Valar, and we had tested their forbearance enough. I would stand guard over the last of my kin until our blood ran so thin they were no longer marked in countenance or age, and when I was the last, beyond even the memory of myth or legend, I would join my Uncle in the veil outside Mandos' keep. 

 

The trees whispered to me, faintly, as I rode the trails we had left behind, past my sister's grave, until the Rammas Echor rose before me and blocked the bloodstained fields from my view. I stayed in the forest and skirted the wall to where the trees were still green and the deserted sanctuary lay as if its inhabitants would return at any moment, where I would find my own peace.


End file.
